


Property Lines and Welcome Mats

by Ohtd_luv4ever



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: F/M, Imp is trying So hard, Marianne is the queen of next day makeup and caffeine consumption, Neighbor au, Strange Magic Secret Santa, Strange Magic Secret Santa 2016, broomchickabroom, grumpy actual cinnamon role Bog, who's utterly infatuated with his new neighbor but won't do anything about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 18:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9000907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ohtd_luv4ever/pseuds/Ohtd_luv4ever
Summary: This is no suburban wonderland for social butterflies and kindly old couples. Dark forest lane is a long and winding street overshadowed by towering dark pines and populated by the perpetually grumpy. Brocann King is no exception, but his is the only house on the block that has a vacant building within easy shouting distance of his front porch. And the woman who had just ripped the half buried For Sale sign out of it's weed infested prison looked like Nothing but trouble.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas everyone! http://broomchickabroom.tumblr.com/ I'm your secret santa! I hope you enjoy this fic as your gift, I really enjoyed writing this au.

Standing on the rather dilapidated mat in front of the open door that said, in slightly faded letters, ‘FUCK OFF’; Brocann King blinked swiftly to prevent the progress of the sticky and appallingly sweet-smelling substance that was currently trying to invade his eyes. It only worked for a moment and he was forced to relinquish his grip on half of the covered pan he was holding. Lifting his lanky and bony hand to swipe whatever had been flung at him away from his brow so he wouldn’t be blinded, a wrinkle of distaste pulled at his mostly coated lips from the texture of the ooze. When the appendage came into view his sight was assaulted by the brightest pink and _sparkling_ semi-liquid he had ever seen. Rainbow glitter permeated the goo, which was a shade of neon he wouldn’t have thought possible outside of trashy billboards or spandex shorty shorts he occasionally saw being worn in town. 

His attention was drawn away from the atrocity currently soaking his body from head to his mid-shin in varying levels of thickness, by a sound rather reminiscent to the time he had sat on his demon of a cat, Imp, by accident. That was swiftly followed by the most colorful cursing he had heard since he had gone to visit his father’s family in Scotland. If he had been of a more delicate constitution…say a construction worker or a mma fighter, he might have blushed at the rather inventive choices that his neighbor was stringing together.   A small hand darted up and latched onto the front of his grey sweater, chipped purple nail polish catching his eye as the woman used her rather surprising strength to drag his much taller frame inside so the portal could be slammed shut.   

Slowly he became aware that the expletives had morphed into apologies. Brocann blinked slowly as he took in the form of his neighbor who had stopped talking and was looking rather put out by his lack of response, a little worry in her expression beneath the pull of her eyebrows down over amber eyes. He couldn’t help but notice that her chosen outfit for the day was a plain black sports bra and a pair of dark purple running pants that had a pattern of broken glass. It showed off her toned stomach with its three jagged scars that ran up from her right hip to her belly button and her lithely muscled arms. His mind’s eye clicked the fetching image into a save for later file, and he felt one corner of his mouth twitching up in the smirk that he _knew_ got him into trouble at the bars he visited. It was the expression that screamed ‘I’m about to piss you off now’.  

“Maybe I should have taken heed of tha’ mat. If ye don’t like guests enough to use chemical warfare on first time visitors then I’d hate tah see what ye do to repeat offenders.”

He was dripping pink sludge onto her wood entry floor and had a small puddle around his feet by this point. To his surprise the woman’s face flushed a dark shade at the sound of his voice and her back straightened up in response to some emotion he couldn’t identify. Maybe outrage...or embarrassment?  Instead of reacting in the way he was used to with his snide tone and overall disagreeable looking features, the woman sighed heavily and rubbed the back of her head, looking sheepish. That expression twisted to distaste as the pink slime that had coated her palm from where she had dragged him into her house got smeared through her hair, but there was no irritation directed at _him_ in her features.

“I am so sorry. I assumed you were whoever has been ding dong ditching my house every day for the last week. I thought that it might deter them from doing it again if they got a little warning.”

Marianne sent a rather baleful glare at the bucket she had mixed up her concoction in, where it was sitting next to the door innocently.

“Instead I ended up dousing you with it and now I suppose my crazy neighbor persona is solidified.”

She looked up at the towering and slightly sodden form of her next door mystery, whom she had only caught glimpses of until now since she had moved in nearly three months ago. A sudden jolt of thought struck her and she wrenched the heavy and still warm covered pan from the man’s startled hands, disregarding the layer of pink syrup that covered it.

“You need to get that stuff off you. It’s got four boxes of hair dye and a shit ton of food coloring in it and is sure to stain your clothes if not your skin if you leave it on much longer.”

Brocann watched her set the dish he had brought with him on the side table and jerked as he felt two small but insistent hands shoving him down the hall, where he could see a bathroom through an open door. He was bemused and rather uncertain as to what his reaction should be to the manhandling, but allowed the strange and forceful woman to prod him into entering. His last look at her was of the top of her riotous brown hair speckled with rainbow glitter before the door shut on him and left him to use the shower to clean off the horrendous mess he was covered in.

 

-Approximately three months ago-

 

 

The lack of a moving van was what threw him off at first. The for sale sign had been up on the house directly beside his for so long that it was considered a permanent fixture of the secluded little neighborhood that was ‘Dark Forest Lane’.  So when that sign, overgrown by ivy and half buried under years of grass and weed growth got a dull white sticker saying SOLD on it, nobody really noticed. The bright purple jeep that showed up two days later, stuffed with what looked like hastily taped up boxes, was more of a shock.

A small woman with short brown hair and scruffy stained clothes hopped out of the large vehicles driver’s side. She promptly went to open the door that had long since half rusted shut key in hand and kicked it in when it wouldn’t open nicely for her. The violent action nearly gave her neighbor a heart attack. Brocann (or ‘Bog’ as his few friends and, unfortunately, numerous family had fondly dubbed him due to his tendency of pessimism) would deny, if ever asked, that he was peeking out of his drab curtains and usually turned down sun shade slats at the oddity that had interrupted his life’s carefully constructed routine.

 

It look two hours for the strange woman in a ripped pair of black sweat pants and a dusty purple tank top to move all her boxes inside. When she wrenched the half buried sign out of the earth at the curb with a satisfied smile, it finally sunk home for both her immediate neighbor and the only other one that was in visible range that she was actually staying.  Bog had marveled at this, for ‘Dark Forest Lane’ was as inhospitable a street as he had ever seen. It was why he had chosen it. This place was not for suburban soccer moms or kind elderly couples, but a refuge for the socially disinclined and just plain grumpy to live without worrying about chipper ‘good mornings’ and ‘how’s the wife’ when they walked down the street.

She stayed. And not even forty-eight hours later he got a very clear idea of just why this odd little woman with the dangerous looking makeup had chosen to make her home here. Bog was surprisingly a morning person. He liked to get up and watch the sun rise. For all its faults, ‘Dark Forest Lane’ was in a very pretty part of the country. If you had a different idea of pretty that is. It was all dark greens and greys and blacks, mixed in with one or two random broad leaf trees that exploded in color during the fall. That morning, Bog was standing on his porch, a grey sweater hastily pulled on over his sleep shirt and his brown hair all up in tufts from sleep when his neighbor made her first appearance since her arrival.

The woman was very clearly _not_ a morning person. She had slept in her makeup and looked rather like she lost a fight with a raccoon and an eyeliner pencil. A mug of what was most likely coffee was clutched in one slender hand, and she was hopping on one foot trying to cram the other into a beat up sneaker.  What short circuited her neighbor’s brain was the fact that she was in running clothes at the beginning of autumn. That meant to her, a sports bra and leggings with a runner’s back pack strapped onto her slender frame. Bog’s house was a good 50 yards away from hers, yet he still heard the cursing colorful enough to shame a sailor when the woman tripped on a loose board and slammed a shoulder into one of the peeling support beams for the porch.

Slamming the now empty mug onto the railing, she began loping down the street. Cramming her earbuds into their proper place, she had no idea that it was far too late for his sanity. _Good God_ she was surely a fae creature, come from some other realm made from his fantasies to torment him. When she saw him on his porch, probably almost camouflaged by the mist rolling around in the early dawn air, a curt nod was all the greeting he got before she was swallowed by the grey veil. His heart gave a hard uneven thump and he had to swallow thickly a couple of times before the lump in his throat would clear.

“Ah pox on mah brain and mah eyes…I canna handle this Now.”

He was lonely. It had been five years since he had known a woman’s companionship, nearly seven since he had been touched by his last ill-fated love interest.  Damn his heart. He had thought that after so long the blasted thing would have shriveled up and been put out of its misery. He didn’t want such feelings. Not with someone he didn’t know and who looked like she could easily shred him both physically and mentally without breaking a sweat. He would try to avoid her, as much as humanly possible after that ill-fated meeting.

 

A month went by and the incidents only grew one after the other that further forced his aching, un-exercised, and stupid heart into spasms of admiration for the mysterious neighbor he had mentally dubbed “Tough Girl”.  She liked his cat. The fiend of a feline was disliked at best and hated at worst by several of the neighbors around the block because of his mischief and habit of stealing shiny objects from anyone he could get within striking distance of. If that wasn’t bad enough the creature would lure the one he had stolen from with the object in question and lead them on a merry chase, only to end up giving it to another through a window or on a porch in an attempt to get his two current victims to interact.  The strange woman had begun setting dishes of food and milk out for the beast.  

They had the same taste in music. He could hear it playing in her jeep when she left for whatever she did as work, blaringly loud and antagonistic notes that came from bands he recognized.  She fenced. Fluidity and grace that came to him only from years and years of toil and practice made her look even more otherworldly when she used the foil in her backyard against dummies that had been set up. One of them often had a crude face drawn on paper pinned to it and a blond horrible looking wig attached. Bog wondered who the dummy represented on his more morose days.

She ate a _lot_ of take out. Delivery vehicles or greasy looking paper bags were in high abundance and pointed out the very likely conclusion that she couldn’t cook. That stirred a long thought buried instinct of his father’s genetics; one that his mother always insisted was a left over from back when knights and ladies were the court of human civilization. It made him want to bring the woman food. Real home made from good ingredients not soaked in fat and preservatives meals. More than one time Bog found himself packaging up the extra he had unconsciously prepared and then remembering at the last second that it was not only highly unlikely that she would take it; but that she might just send him flying with a broken rib for the offer. No one on Dark Forest Lane was the type to bring over covered warm dishes made with their own two hands just to be _nice_. Bog wondered at his self-preservation and sanity in the moments when he shoved the tupperware into the back of his fridge.

What was probably the worst thing, as one month turned into two and her neighbors got used to her comings and goings was how well she fit in. Usually a graft to this neighborhood took a long time to settle, to find the rhythm that subtly shifted the dynamic of the whole street until it no longer rubbed anyone the wrong way. With this woman it was almost instant. She didn’t try to change anything. She cut her grass and kept the property clean, but none of the cosmetic changes she put to the house she had bought clashed with the atmosphere of her chosen habitat. No garishly bright paint appeared on the door or the window shutters or the mailbox, no signs popped up in her yard to advertise politics or social groups; her car even stayed free of any peppy bumper sticker slogans. His neighbor’s personality was very clear in more subtle ways, and Bog respected the fact that she could keep to herself.

It didn’t help that every time the woman managed to catch a glimpse of him she had some sort of positive usually nonverbal greeting to give him. Every little half smile and even the grumpy morning nods as she loped her way down the street made his heart give a little jolt that he _still_ wasn’t used to. No matter how many times he gave himself a lecture on self-preservation it never seemed to sink in.

Thankfully his mother wasn’t there to see what he was currently holding in his hands as he trudged through the falling red and gold leaves to the slightly worn down and cracked pavement on the other side of his property. If she ever was told that he had succumbed to his father’s genetic impulse he would never hear the end of it.  The Scottish dessert that was still warm in its dish was a heavy weight in his hand as Bog walked up the creaking steps to the rather amusing ‘welcome mat’ and pressed one long digit into the doorbell. What seemed like less than a millisecond later, the most unpleasant greeting he had ever received was obscuring his vision in all its nauseatingly sweet sticky and _glittery_ glory.  The end of the accompanying victorious battle cry morphed into a cut off strangled silence as he stood stock still, slowly getting soaked by whatever he had been doused with.

-On the other side of the door-

 

Marianne was sleep deprived. She was also in a vengeful mood and giggling in a very good imitation of her sister Dawn as she sat cross legged in front of her front door, a large empty mudding bucket held between her legs. In a haphazard mess around her lay strewn several boxes of hair dye with the name ‘bubblegum neon star’ on their paper sides; two now drained bottles of pink food coloring that were tossed across the biggest carton of grapefruit gelatin she could buy and a two pound bottle of rainbow glitter. The dregs of said bottle were being dumped into the utter monster of a creation that was waiting to be stirred with a paint stick. Laughing very much like every cliché villain from her favorite movies, the woman set aside her finished abomination and made sure it was in easy reach for when her victims would make themselves known.

For the past six days without fail her door bell would ring at two o’clock in the afternoon just as she was getting ready to get in the shower for work. It was Saturday now and her day off, but Marianne would bet her favorite fencing foil that the culprit or culprits would do it again. So she had decided to give whoever it was a warning. The brew that was sitting innocently in its bucket was harmless but highly irritating and perfect to get her point across. So she waited, hunkered down on the wooden floor coiled like a tiger about to spring as it neared two p.m. At one fifty-two she heard the telltale creak of her steps as weight was put on them and snatched up her bucket. The tension gathered as she waited breathlessly and when the doorbell rang out, shattering the silence, Marianne wrenched open the panel of wood and hurled the full bucket directly in the center of the open space.

In horror she watched as if in slow motion as the hideous sludge launched itself out at the last person she had expected to see on her doorstep. Wide blue eyes and an impossibly tall, lanky frame started to recoil and then froze as the room temperature semi-liquid coated him from his forehead down, splashing all along his front and onto the peeling porch boards at his feet. A moment later the woman noticed the covered tupperware pan that he was holding and incredulousness took over most of her other emotions. Seeing his eyes blinking away some of the goo that was now sliding down his long nose woke her from the stupor that had taken over her. The obscenities that followed were interspersed with the best apologies her muddled brain could cobble together, and when those didn’t get a response she finally lapsed into a very uncomfortable silence.

 

“Maybe I should have taken heed of tha’ mat. If ye don’t like guests enough to use chemical warfare on first time visitors then I’d hate tah see what ye do to repeat offenders.”

His voice sent a purely physical response like a lightning bolt and it nailed her feet to the floor. Good lord that rough amused Scottish brogue couldn’t possibly belong to her already unfairly attractive and mysterious neighbor. Clearing her throat and praying to whatever deity was out there that her flush wasn’t as visible as she thought it was, Marianne managed to get her own woefully inadequate vocal cords to function so she could apologize again.

As if her embarrassment wasn’t enough already it took her nearly two minutes before she remembered just _what_ she had put into that concoction and the fact that it was very, very liable to stain whatever it touched with prolonged contact. Almost on autopilot she yanked the man inside and began to shove him in the direction of her prepped bathroom, taking the warm and delicious smelling pan from his long scarred hands to be dealt with later. A nerve-wracking twenty minutes was occupied by shoving her neighbor’s glitter obliterated clothing into her washer and dithering around in her living room with a mop and rags. It wasn’t until she heard the door open that she remembered that he had nothing to put on but his underwear and the slightly ratty grey and purple robe that she had put into her bathroom that would most certainly not fit her six-five neighbor.

He had forgone the robe entirely. The man stood there inside her kitchen doorway naked from the waist up with her towel around his impossibly slim waist; hair slicked back and looking like every wet dream she had ever enjoyed from her adolescence with his scars and the wonderful ink that decorated both arms from wrists to his collarbones.  She forced her thick swollen tongue to work after two false starts as the man stared at her with the brightest flush she had ever seen on his angular devastatingly striking features. He had noticed that she was oogling him. Before Marianne could blurt out more apologies her neighbor seemed to gather himself, a determined expression crossing his blue eyes.

Squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath, the rolling rasp of his voice stretched across the empty space separating them and took the first plunge into the unknown.

“Would ye like tah go to dinner?”  

 


End file.
